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Blog
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Update: Since October 2009, The Nightlife Grill has provided over $75,000 in wages to at risk young people, that has allowed us to spend nearly 7300 hours with them.
As a full time youth pastor for a church, my greatest passion was reaching out to kids who frankly did want to have anything to do with a praise band, a sermon, or a church building. We knew that the kids in good families had plenty of people that loved them, so we tried to develop programs that would attempt to draw in hurting kids, but we tried to do it with the same ministry models we had successfully used with "church" kids. But we found that many of these hurting students needed much more time than a typical church youth group could offer them. Our "big" weekly youth group meeting (some music, maybe a crowd breaker, and a sermon) might get us into their lives for 2 hours a week. If we convinced them to join one of our weekly mentoring groups, we might get another hour each week. Or maybe we get them to attend a week long summer camp in the woods somewhere, or a 2 day retreat couple times a year. if we were really lucky, we got them to raise a couple thousand dollars to go on a missions trip to South America! Those things are really cool and often powerful, but it wasn't actual real life, you know what I mean? Our best case scenario was 2-4 hours a week, maybe 1 week in the woods or South America, and a few trips to the bowling alley or putt putt golf. Its a lot to ask of someone, to make sure 2-4 hours a week and one week per year in the woods gives an at-risk young person all the ministry they need.
The Nightlife Center uses a different approach. See, other than school, the place these kids would spend most of their time was either work or just hanging out with friends. We realized many of the students we reach need someone to invest in them every day, for several hours, maybe 30 hours a week. If you're not a school teacher or a coach just cant do that. Well the Nightlife Grill allows us to do just that. Open for lunch each day, we hope to sell enough food or raise enough through our $30 Per Month Club to hire kids God brings us that need mentoring and relationships. Every penny we bring in goes to this outreach program. We teach accountability, job skills, responsibility, work ethic, but most importantly we teach them a message about hope and redemption. We spend 15-30 hours a week working along side of them! You may have read some of the stories from kids that have been impacted by this program. Who could have ever thought that you could have such a huge impact on a hurting young person simply through buying a hamburger! The only catch... we need to sell about 60 a day to break even! We are about half that right now, so for real, if you are hungry, you might as well come to Nightlife for lunch and Eat Good... Do Good! Or if you cant eat lunch with us, join our $30 per month support club!
Nightlife Grill: Open for lunch Mon-Fri, 11:30-2:30, and Sun,11:30-3
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Mobilepreacher exists so people called by God to do innovative ministry can have an organizational structure, accountability, and encouragement that allows them to pursue their "dream" ministry. Currently we have 3 "mobilepreachers", Its founder Joe Davis, who runs the Nightlife Center, Chris Martini, a dynamic youth and college age motivational speaker, and Tony Camp, the founder of Family Builders:
FAMILY BUILDERS: Strong Families Impacting Generations
This time last year God began to stir in us a desire to work with the whole family not just within Student Ministry. So after 20 years in student ministry I took a leap of faith and resigned as Youth Pastor from our church to find our "perfect fit" as a Family Pastor at a church. I learned pretty quick that my so called "perfect fit" was not what God had planned our life. So 6th months ago i had a thought of maybe starting a ministry that could help many churches with ministering to the whole family. Then God moved that thought into a dream which later He sculpted into a vision for Family Builders.
During the early days God provided for our family in many ways and put people in my life to help us launch Family Builders. That is where MobilePreacher.org stepped in providing us the structure necessary to chase the dream God birthed in us. MobilePreacherorg became our covering for our non profit status, our administrative and financial accountability and a great encouragement for us to fulfill God's purpose for our life. MobilePreacher.org exists to help people like us chase a dream and make it a reality! |
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18 years ago, right out of college, i took my first full time job. I was a history and p.e. teacher in a christian school in Columbia, South Carolina called Ben Lippen School. I was also the head coach of the JV football team, the first year they had ever had football. We went undefeated that year, and I have such fond memories of the players and families. I remember the first day of practice during some drills, i saw this little skinny freshman kid throwing the ball about 50 yards to this big 6'1" kid. Pass after pass, catch after catch, I knew we had a good thing working. They put up unbelievable numbers that season, averaged 35 points a game, and about 250 yards passing. Not bad for a first year program! That QB was Chris Biser, and the kid catching alot of those passes that year was Jack Pressly. Man i had fun with those guys! Well this week, almost 18 years later, both of these kids are grown men. We connected through facebook about a month ago, and they emailed me back and forth a few times remembering just how good we were, and how we all probably should have been in the NFL as players and coaches. It reminded me that i had those old games on video tape so i watched them last week. Brought back good memories. |
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Wednesday Nights at Nightlife are all about outreach... As the sun sets, kids start arriving around 4pm. Music is playing, the XBOX's are all goin', and the crowd begins to grow. Outside a bunch of kids are playing basketball, soccer, or just sitting in a circle with friends. Once in a while one of the kids makes the mistake of challenging me to a game of basketball. Usually i whip their tail, and give them a free smoothie to make them feel better. By 6:30 there are 70-90 kids inside and out. The nightlife staff is busy connecting, conversing, and working hard. 6:45 the free pizza arrives... "Hey guys!!! Start with one piece please!!!".
7:10 rolls around, and i send out one of the bigger kids to tell everyone its time to put out their cigarettes and come inside and "show Pastor Joe some love" and listen to my message. This last week we started a four week series on proving God exists. So there we are, in the middle of the Nightlife Center, with 90+ kids who would never darken the door of a church (some don't even darken the door of a school anymore!), and i begin to share the message of hope and redemption to hurting kids. Thier response overwhelms me. They laugh at my jokes (i know right?), tell their friends to be quiet so they can hear, and i can see on their faces that God is using His truth and Spirit to enlighten them and draw them to Himself. I love it when I see our sovereign God begin to pierce the unsuspecting hearts of youth who need His touch. I say a prayer of blessing for the whole group, and we begin the "after ministry". Some kids are hanging with staff, listening to music played through our killer sound system. But several students come up afterwards, to discuss tonight's topic further. Deep, meaningful discussions begin, and before i know it... its 8:45. I round up the students that i take home every week, turn Nightlife over to my able staff, and we head home.
Every week, this group grows in number and connects with each other and our staff. Its amazing to see these kids who say the "hate church", coming to Nightlife on Wednesday nights, knowing its a youth group with a short fat pastor that is going to preach the Message of Hope! This Wednesday during the day was very discouraging, lots of bad news came to me, and I was very down. Then God reminds me why we are working 70 hours a week to make Nightlife work. Seems God knew just what I needed last night.
To join our 100 @$30 a month team, click here!
To become a supporter of the Nightlife Center, click here!
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Pastor Joe Davis
Old School Theology...
Unconventional Ministry |
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Chris Martini Bio
 At the age of 15 I decided to walk away from God. Over the next year drugs and alcohol slowly took over my life. At the age of 16 I was driving home from a party drunk. My car went off the side of the road and was thrown into the air. My car began to barrel role and I was ejected from the car. I ended up being pinned between my car and a tree. During the next six hours the paramedics carefully removed me from the wreck and preformed CPR to bring me back to life. I woke up in the hospital and was told I may never walk again. I spent the next 6 years angry at God and got right back into drugs and alcohol. Six years later at a close friends funeral my heart began to soften toward the calling I had refused to listen to from God for so many years. I began to realize that God never gave up on me and still loved me. About a year later I made Jesus Christ the Lord of my life. Because of this Christ gives me the strength I need and has also given purpose to my life which was missing for many years. I have had the opportunity to share my story with thousands of teenagers. God has used this tragedy to show His love to many teenagers across the state of Florida. I have been in youth ministry for the past 4 years. My ministry with Mobile Preacher includes: Speaking at youth groups, high schools and colleges, Sarasota and Venice teen court, Sarasota youth shelter, sports chaplain at Riverview High and Booker High, juvenile institutions in Bradenton and Sarasota, assisting the Fellowship of Christian Athletes huddle at Booker High and helping students that come to the Nightlife Center.
If you would like to support Chris Martini please click on the link below.
www.mobilepreacher.org/index.php
You can contact Chris Martini at:
cmartini24@comcast.net
www.myspace.com/martiniawareness
www.facebook.com/home.php
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